My First Hockey Puck

Every gluten-free, vegan, allergy-friendly and diabetic-friendly baking website I have visited has warned those new to world of alternative baking that there will be failures. No ifs, ands or buts about it. There will be failures.

This is my first foray into trying to make a lower GI version of a red velvet cupcake. I intended to start small and just play around with the sugar/sweetener and so I simply used rapadura sugar instead of white sugar. Admittedly, I am not completely certain that the sugar sub was the reason for the failure, but it was the only unusual thing I did (unless I followed the recipe wrong, which is a possibility. I will let you know when I try them again).


I was trying to make a red velvet cake for a workmate's birthday. While these tasted amazing, the texture was dense like a dry but fudge brownie. After trying one iced and then without, the texture grew on me but by that stage I had decided to throw them out and start again. D wasn't a fan of the texture and didn't think I should be inflicting anything I was less than happy with on my new work colleagues, as I've only been at this job for two months and only started sharing food last week.

This cake was also my first red velvet cake that was actually red!!! I've had disappointing results previously so I probably was a little enthusiastic with the food colouring. I don't mind, I love the colour.


I have just realised that these cupcakes would have been perfect to make into cake balls. They still had a fair bit of moisture in them (their dryness came from their density and weight) and wouldn't have needed much icing at all to bind them together. I must remember that the next time I make a hockey puck.


Look at the icing. It's almost a cross between a cream cheese icing and a buttercream that I've never tried before. The original recipe's picture has the cake topped with this glorious light and fluffy cloud. I first thought it was whipped cream, but it wasn't. Mine was very light as well and it really needed to be refrigerated before it could be piped. It was still too soft when I pulled it out an hour or so later, so luckily I hadn't iced any cakes apart from my taste test. The icing is in the fridge waiting for the next attempt.

Crème Brûlée with Baileys Custard

So, a couple of months ago I bought a blowtorch. I'm pretty wimpy when it comes to fire and frying and burning things, so I've always found them a little intimidating. I don't know whatever possessed me to buy one, actually. I don't remember. It must have been something I read on the internet...

(Funny story, when I went to pay the salesperson said "Oh, you must be watching Masterchef". I actually hadn't been watching Masterchef at the time - I phased in and out last season - but I thought it was great that a TV show was getting people to start getting into this kind of thing.)

I only bought a little blowtorch, even though all my research did indicate that these homestyle torches didn't really do a great deal. I don't think I could have overcome my fear enough to handle one of these.

When I got home, I enlisted D to fill the tank while I set to making custard.

Recently my blogging organisation has been somewhat lacking, not only in the posting department but in the background as well. It's not as if I haven't been cooking either, because I have. I think it's because normally I will upload my pictures straight after I've cooked something, it's fresh in my mind, I know where the recipe came from and what I think. Lately, it's been weeks before I've uploaded my photos and it's a lot harder to get the information together. This is what happened with this post, except the picture has been uploaded for ages, I just didn't write any notes!!

So I can't tell you the exact measurements for the custard. I can tell you it was a very classic custard, with egg yolks, sugar, cream and vanilla. I finished it off with a glug or two of coffee-flavoured Baileys. It was an incredible custard though, I had to stop my taste testing because there wasn't going to be enough for the brulee.

I haven't made a brulee before and while I'd read pretty widely about them, I wasn't following a recipe (bad idea for me!). Clearly I hadn't been taking my readings in though, as after I had cooked my custard on the stove I put it into two ramekins, sprinkled on some sugar and ended up with:

so much of a failure it's sideways

It was a tasty failure though. The custard was so good I didn't care it didn't have a crispy caramel topping.

The next day I resolved to try again. I had the same problem resisting the urge to just eat all the custard. This time, I decided to put my research to use. Upon a revisit, it turns out that most places tell you that a creme brulee really needs to be baked in a water bath as the stovetop custards can be more difficult to set or thicken.

So, I baked my custards this time. I didn't let them cool, although apparently it is best to let the custards sit overnight in the fridge. I wanted warm creme brulee.

The difference between the stirred custard and the baked custard was remarkable. The brilliant people on Chowhound are confident that a stirred custard can set as well as a baked one, but I am clearly missing something. One day I may even put effort into trying to work out what that something is, but both methods are so easy I don't really mind which one I use.

After I had removed my beautiful custards from the oven, I sprinkled over the sugar and fired up the blowtorch. You can see the picture at the top of this post. I did try and minimise my blackened spots the first time but I soon got over that. The best part was hearing the 'crack' after you tapped the caramelised sugar...

Farmer's Market Finds

One day I might even get around to posting what I did with them!

Freekeh

I went out and bought this packet of freekeh after hearing about it on Syrian Food Safari. I want to make the freekeh with chicken.

Janella liked to use the word freaky a lot in her show at the Good Food and Wine Show. I was hoping she was doing it ironically because she was going to cook freekeh, but she wasn't.

I'm now on the lookout for other tasty recipes involving freekeh. If you've got one, please send it to me!!

Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show 2010 - Sunday

Warning - this is a very long post!!!

We had another early start on Sunday, the last day of the Good Food and Wine Show for 2010.

Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show 2010 - Saturday

Saturday was a massive day for Mum and I. We woke up nice and early because we had a lot of things to cram in before we headed off to the Good Food and Wine Show for the second day.

Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show 2010 - Friday

The first day of the Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show dawned lovely and sunny. My mother, D and I caught the bus into the Convention Centre so we wouldn't have to worry about parking or a designated driver in case we all wanted to try something a little stronger than usual.

Kitchen Time on 7Two

I was so excited when I discovered Channel 7Two's Kitchen Time. Kitchen Time was a block of four or five cooking shows back to back in the afternoons. In fact, I first started watching during my Christmas leave and we had to buy and DVD recorder so I could tape it when I went back to work.

The Martha Stewart Show would kick things off, then you might have a show from Ainsley then one from Nick Nairn and then something from Rick Stein. It was a great variety and the lineup changed every day.

When I had some time off in the beginning of October I noticed that Kitchen Time wasn't as spectacular as it used to be. Martha still kicked things off, but the show that followed wasn't familiar to me, neither was the cook/chef presenting. There was only one or two shows after Martha, then Kitchen Time was interrupted by a repeat of whatever reality TV show was popular at the time.

I've just looked again, as I am home ill with a nasty cold, and now Martha is followed by half an hour of Emeril and that's it. Every day. Nothing but Martha and Emeril. My poor Kitchen Time. I will miss you...

Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show 2010 - Preshow Thoughts

I can't believe that it's November already and the Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show is over for another year.

Before I started writing this post, I had a look back over my thoughts on the last few shows (in fact. I've created a label just for Good Food and Wine Show posts) to see how previous shows compared to 2010. I realised that for the two out of the last three years, the first post of each show talks about how either other people or I were disappointed about the quality of the show and felt it wasn't as good as the year before it. I have to say, my initial reaction to the 2010 Brisbane show was that it wasn't as good as last year and it certainly couldn't be compared to the quality of the shows put on in Sydney and Melbourne.

Interestingly, it seems that numbers were down on last year for the shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne's 2009 show had the benefit of being on the Queen's Birthday long weekend, stretching the show out to an impressive four days and 41,782 visitors, but it still seems that the 2009 numbers far eclipsed those in 2010. According to the Post Show Reports, the 2009 Sydney show attracted 53,135 or 40,643 visitors, depending where on the page you looked. This year, over 27,000 people visited in Melbourne and over 38,500 people in Sydney.

19,367 Brisbanites attended last year's show and put in a very impressive effort of spending an average of $199.84. That was more than Melbourne's average!!! Good show, Brisbane.

The 2010 Celebrity Theatre roster was quite lean here, when tickets first went on sale it consisted only of George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan, Matt Moran and Manu Fieldel. That meant there was only three shows. When I compared that to six in Sydney and Melbourne, five in Perth and the four in Adelaide, I was disappointed. I know that Brisbane is the last in the show tour and with the first shows beginning in February it must be a scheduling nightmare for the promoters, but you should be as committed to putting on a great show for the last stop as you would for the first. Or maybe I'm still a little disgruntled that we missed out on Gordon Ramsay last year.

Anyway, after viewing the schedule, we decided that we might give the Saturday show a miss in 2010. Last year, it was incredibly busy on Saturday and from what we could see, there wasn't that much on offer to justify all the crowds and pushing. The 2009 Post Show Report says that there were only 3,538 visitors on Friday compared to 8,690 on Saturday and 7,139 on Sunday.

In hindsight, it may have been a little premature to make such a call three months before the show when tickets first went on sale, because when I was planning our visits in October - yes, I am that much of a control freak - I noticed that there was now a fourth show. It was only scheduled once, on Saturday afternoon, and it had not been there before. It was called Janella's Healthy Food Experience and it was presented by Janella Purcell, who I only knew of from The Biggest Loser Masterclass. Mum has Austar and poor Channel 10 reception, so she knew Janella mainly from her work on Good Chef/Bad Chef.

I hadn't seen my mother since earlier this year and I have made quite a few lifestyle changes since her last visit (as an aside, my weight loss is starting to slow now and it's getting a bit harder to move the weight, but I'm still committed to getting to my goal weight and as of this morning, I've lost 18.9kg). My mum has always been a very healthy cook with little to no sweet tooth to speak of. Growing up, my sister and I were taught about the value of healthy cooking however I don't really think what Mum was trying to tell us really clicked with me until recently. Cakes and other baked goods were always only treats in our house. I think once I realised that I could make tasty treats whenever I wanted to indulge my sweet tooth after I moved out of home I had to get that out of my system first. Now, my sweet tooth is surprisingly satisfied with dates or dried cranberries or beautifully tasty Noosa Reds cherry tomatoes. I have learned so much about not only organic food, but also vegan and raw cooking (or uncooking, as the case may be). I was so excited to share all of this with my mother. Previously, we had both loved cooking but it was like we were in different chapters of the same book. Now we are on the same page.

Wow, I am verbose today. And here I was considering condensing the whole weekend into one post. Now I might have to split them up because my pre-show thoughts are rambling into a post on their own!!!

Anyway, Mum and I are both really into healthy cooking and eating and we were both interested in what Janella had to say, so we ended up booking tickets for Saturday too.

Aside from my initial misgivings with the range of exhibitors and shows, we were still excited. D was going to come with us on the Friday and my aunt and her partner were going to join Mum and I on the Sunday.

We were all set... Roll on the show!!!